Kindall Fredricks

Woman (DOA), 54, Hair Still Slick with Auburn Dye 


​Your cells scandalized
by the thought of you once
rumored you into existence
one tattling protein at a time
You     slip of tongue     arrived early
in a putty of vernix the sensation
of your name from Mother’s mouth
like a feather Demerol pulled across your skin like
a string tightening as its kite whipped away
Each new voice became

        a slide’s silver rung
cooling your palm as you pulled
yourself up        eight now         grace was a thin
skin you twisted and picked off    The now-unmade
bed of your neck was kicked from the foot
of this girl who once rose to cheers
and saw the velvet backs of pitbulls crashing
into one another      their muscles thickrooted
     as gospel
            Later
you’d practice moving your hips
in the woods schmoozy with rot
as the lake unfolded the crinkled moon
like a letter without a destination
The stump’s cologne reeking
on your pillow as dreams metabolized
the laughter when you pronounced both c’s
in crescent            Say nothing of the powdered
beetles that color your lips red     Say nothing

of the pond’s gray spine when it rose
behind your childhood home      those eager arms
that stretched out scooped out
your sister’s ballet slippers           Say nothing
of kettled want your daughter’s far-sightedness
Or the word you remembered
as you ran the paintbrush up and down
your graying hair pain braiding through
your arm           penumbra
each syllable a blind
clacking open

On Hunger 

​ Dysphagia is what the doctor called it--
A word of quiet parts, a hymnal of fish
slowing beneath ice. A form was signed
and a tube was inserted into my father’s
stomach.     We need to ensure he tolerates his feeds
A voice with a crease of sympathy       thrown
like a paper airplane.    Each night, the moon’s white blade
passing over my head. Each night—    the drip.
The sharps container clicking open its jaw
to belly little bits of him.  Then            We will send you home
with samples.      And    palliative care is different
from hospice.       Feeding my father is so much like
the first time I fed my daughter.   The stunt
of swallowing, the weight of mashed bananas
making her grimace as my husband and I clap
and clap.             
                                         No,
      this isn’t true. The truth is I see his swollen stomach
and think           snake      a field mouse pulled
     down its body
                                          like a baby wriggling
                    in a stork’s knapsack.                    
                          Does it hurt? I don’t know I don’t.
Speaking of snakes, he once told me the froth crackling
on leaves was snake spit. I thought of course of course
a thing nape-soft and pleading through grass
      with harm balled in its throat     would leave a mark.
                        But this isn’t true either--
a snake doesn’t have to leave a signature
before it tightens its tourniquet, and your tin can
heart occasionally rattles until your brain bleeds.
                        God I never even knew this man--
this unfamiliar body I hold. His stomach coming out swearing
in a way the man never did as I change his shit-stained pajamas
            He wasn’t mean. He just never belonged to any place
he entered. It wasn’t it’s not his fault--Grandpa used to lock Daddy
in a room for days without food  my mother once said
as he idled in the car on my birthday. He stayed there
until the pink streamers tangled in the trees.
            Sometimes, I believe I ate everything on my plate
   that night.
            Other times, 
                        I remember lying in bed, hunger
                                          pulling me close enough to hear
                                                                     a swallow.

--
Kindall Fredricks is a practicing registered nurse and an MFA candidate at Sam Houston State University, focusing on both poetry and the intersection of literature and the medical sciences. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in New Letters, Rust + Moth, Quarterly West, Sugar House Review, NELLE, The Coachella Review, Menacing Hedge, WomensArts Quarterly, The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, The Academy of American Poets, and more. She resides in Texas with her husband, daughter, and two furballs.